at the vast landscape. Out there nothing was soiled. She rediscovered the eternal joys, the eternal youth, of open air. Behind her, the sun must have been going down. She saw only the rays of the setting orb as with infinite tenderness they gilded this section of the city that she knew so well. It was like daylight’s swan song, a joyful refrain that slowly laid everything to rest. Tawny flames lit up the floating pier below, while the iron cables of the Pont de Constantine stood out like black lace against the whiteness of the bridge’s pillars. Then, on the right, the shady groves of the Halle aux Vins and the Jardin des Plantes looked like large pools of stagnant green water whose surface almost blended with the hazy sky. On the left, the Quai Henri IV and Quai de la Rapée were lined with the same rows of houses the girls had looked out on twenty years earlier, with the same brown patches where warehouses stood and the same red smokestacks where there were factories. And above the trees the slate roof of the Salpêtrière, turned blue by the sun’s adieu, suddenly looked to her like an old friend. But what calmed her, what cooled her breast, were the long gray banks and above all the Seine, the giant, which she used to watch as it flowed all the way from the horizon straight to where she stood, in those happy days when it frightened her to think that the river might swell and climb all the way up to her window. She remembered the affection she and her sister felt for the river, their love for its colossal flow, for the thrill of roaring water spreading itself out in sheets at their feet, opening out around and behind them in two arms they could no longer see but whose vast and pure caress they felt. They were smart dressers already, and on fair days they used to say that the Seine had put on her beautiful gown of green silk streaked with white. And the currents where the water curled in eddies trimmed that gown with satin ruffles, while in the distance, beyond the belt of bridges, splashes of light greeted the eye like flaps of fabric the color of the sun.
And Renée, lifting up her eyes, stared at the vast expanse of pale blue sky slowly dissolving into the oblivion of dusk. She thought of the complicitous city, of blazing nights on the boulevards, of ardent afternoons in the Bois, of pale harsh days in big new town houses. Then, when she looked down again and gazed once more on the tranquil horizon of her childhood, on this neighborhood of bourgeois and workers in which she had once dreamt of a life of peace, a final bitterness came to her lips. Her hands clasped, she sobbed into the falling night.
The following winter, when Renée died of acute meningitis, it was her father who paid off her debts. The bill from Worms came to 257,000 francs.
NOTES
CHAPTER 1
coupé: a closed carriage seating two passengers, with an outside seat for the driver.
Bois de Boulogne: an English-style park on the western edge of Paris, newly created from a royal military preserve under Napoleon III.
fiacre: a small hackney coach.
the rivière and the aigrette: A rivière is a necklace of diamonds or other precious stones; an aigrette is a spray of gems often worn in the hair.
Second Empire: the era of French history (1852–1870) that began when the Second Republic was replaced by the imperial rule of Napoleon III.
Porte de la Muette: a gate in the west of Paris offering access to the Bois de Boulogne.
Tuileries: royal residence adjacent to the Louvre that was the site of the imperial court in Paris.
Lassouche: J.-P. Lassouche, a popular actor during the Second Empire.
Louvre: The additions to the Louvre museum, completed in 1857, set the style for massive public buildings with high mansard roofs and a profusion of classical detail.
Ile Saint-Louis: a tranquil, respectable neighborhood of Paris, which occupies an island in the Seine.
Légion d’honneur: order of merit conferred as a high honor by the French government and indicated by a red ribbon.
Léoville and Château-Lafitte: celebrated Bordeaux wines.
Conseil